Humanities Books

after reading this book only one phrase comes to mind, "the universe finally makes sense"!!!!!!

Jennifer Faus has done something which, up to this time very few people, if any, have attempted to do: to tell the stories of the victims of the Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland. The stories of these people are both heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time as family members and friends talk about the loved ones they lost because they decided to join in a protest for equal rights. The actions of the British Government and what they did after the slaughter of these innocent people is just sickening and certainly makes you realize why organizations such as the I.R.A. exist in the first place.

The Bloody Sunday massacre was a horrible event which never should have happened. The fact that very few people understand how evil the actions of the British Government were and what they did afterwards makes this book so much more important. Everybody seems to forget about the fact that the British Government denied that the event ever took place for several weeks after the incident, and then when it was inevitable that the cover up could not be contained anymore, they portrayed the victims as the bad guys - planting false evidence on them, trying to trash the reputations of the victims, and even harrassing the members of the families afterwards (one woman whose son was killed had her house constantly raided by the British every few weeks for years after the massacre).

I applaud Jennifer Faus for writing this book and finally telling the stories of the victims of Bloody Sunday. It's about time that the victims stopped being treated as the criminals.

This was a required text for a college course I took in Ancient Greek philosophy. Though this book does not contain large samples of fragments from the Pre-Socratics themselves it does an excellent job of both contextualizing their thought and clearly explaining their ideas. A very helpful guide to Pre-Socratic philosophy.

I've read more than my fair share of research methods books and this has to be one of the best. The book is a joy to read. Pittenger's writing style is easy to follow even when he enters the turbulent areas of more complicated subject matters. What I particularly enjoy are the examples that Pittenger uses to illustrate various concepts. All the examples are "practical" in that they represent topics that are generally interesting to read. Pittenger also links the topics of statistics and research methods in seamlessly. Anyone wanting to learn the links between a hypothesis, research design, and statistical analysis will greatly benefit from reading this text.

The shipment was a few days late but the product is great.
thanks

No Western woman writer has shared more of her life as a rancher and environmentalist than Linda Hasselstrom, whose books about living and working on her South Dakota ranch have been an important part of my library since the early 1990s. This collection of essays, written between 1985-1999 and revised for this publication, is a splendid sampling of her prose, by turns brash, provocative, passionate, chilling, and funny. If you haven't yet read Hasselstrom's work, Between Grass and Sky is a fine place to start.

The twenty essays in this book are divided into three sections: Learning to See, Hunter and Hunted, and Who Cares for the Land? The first section takes us deeply into Hasselstrom's homeplace--a landscape of birds, cows, grass, sky, and eternal enigmas. But whether she is writing about stacking hay with an antique tractor on the hottest day in July or tracing the tunnels of mice under the snow or finding snakes in the pressure cooker, Hasselstrom sees all with a fine, practiced eye. "What a busy and engrossing place the prairie is," she writes, and her readers must agree. The second section focuses on the predator-prey relationship and the part that humans play. It includes essays about hunting buffalo, sleeping with grizzlies, and living with loss. Section Three takes a hard look at the consequences of thoughtless land development and the promise of new relationships between communities of people and communities of the land.

This book proves what Hasselstrom has been saying for years: that there is no contradiction between being an environmentalist and a rancher. It is an eloquent testimony to the rancher's daily work on the land, with domestic and wild animals, in all sorts of weather, amid every sort of calamity. It is an appreciation of the strong bonds that unite the communities of those who love the land and use it wisely, as many ranchers do, and a warning of the consequences of reckless, exploitative development.

Once I picked up the book, I couldn't stop until I'd read all the essays, but for me, two stand out. "Sleeping with the Grizzly" is about (at least in part) the challenge of being a menstruating woman on a wilderness trek--it's full of Hasselstrom's characteristic perceptive humor. (No male nature writer could ever have written this!) "The Cow is My Totem" includes the hilarious story of what happened when a coyote blundered into a calf nursery. Savor this comic hyperbole: "From every direction, cows were running toward the nursery. Bags swinging, heads raised, they all bellowed in outrage, assuring their calves that rescue was on the way . . . Rumbling threats, [three bulls] galloped up the slope, persuaded some magnificent stranger was seducing their harem. I estimate that at that moment, fifty thousand pounds of fury was stampeding toward one forty-pound coyote."

Linda Hasselstrom writes with a naturalist's perceptive eye, an environmentalist's concern, and a rancher's long and practical experience of working and living on the land. Between Grass and Sky belongs on the bookselves of all who care about our American prairies.

Reviewed by Susan Wittig Albert
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviews.org
reviewing books by, for, and about women

What a great resource! A treat for you and the children you teach. Burrows compositions are wonderful. The songs are fun and engaging. The activities are creative and easy to use. Music teachers will consider this a valuable addition to their resource collection. The music is accessible and challenging at the same time. This collection of heartwarming and sometimes humorous songs is a must have for those looking to teach and inspire the young musicians of today. Beware the Music Teacher!, Sing a Song for Nature, and Positive Attitude were among my favorites. Add this to your collection, and you will be happily humming these songs for years to come!

This book covers a variety of ELL topics. Each chapter presents information which is research based and immediately applicable to the classroom. I have used it constantly since being introduced to it four years ago.
Topics include syntactic theory, pragmatics, reading research theory and assesment. It is edited by the outstanding researcher Bardovi-Harlig.
This is an excellent book for TESOL grad students, ESL/EFL teachers who wish to expand their knowledge and those interested in becoming familiar with the jargon of the profession.

I have used this book with whole-class instruction and individual work. Either way, the lessons are so easy to understand that students walk away with well-thought out poems. Each lesson offers steps for prewriting and examples of finished poems. Students have fun with the various options to write about!

Compiled by Joshua Rutsky, Beyond The Bard: Fifty Plays For Use In The English Classroom offers summaries of the themes, set requirements, planning ideas and more of fifty different plays classroom teachers can utilize as part of the curriculums for their English Literature classes. A superb catalog that carefully outlines the works its presents and offers "red flags" as to any suggestive or possibly inappropriate material, before discriminating teachers have to pay expensive royalties for right to peruse and perform the plays themselves, Beyond The Bard: Fifty Plays For Use In The English Classroom is a unique and very highly recommended contribution to Highschool and College English Department and Theater Department curriculum supplementation and reference collections.